[House Hearing, 111 Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
LOOKING OUT FOR THE VERY YOUNG, THE ELDERLY, AND OTHERS WITH SPECIAL
NEEDS: LESSONS FROM KATRINA AND RELATED DISASTERS
=======================================================================
(111-71)
HEARING
BEFORE THE
SUBCOMMITTEE ON
ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT, PUBLIC BUILDINGS, AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT
OF THE
COMMITTEE ON
TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
ONE HUNDRED ELEVENTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
October 20, 2009
__________
Printed for the use of the
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure
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COMMITTEE ON TRANSPORTATION AND INFRASTRUCTURE
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota, Chairman
NICK J. RAHALL, II, West Virginia, JOHN L. MICA, Florida
Vice Chair DON YOUNG, Alaska
PETER A. DeFAZIO, Oregon THOMAS E. PETRI, Wisconsin
JERRY F. COSTELLO, Illinois HOWARD COBLE, North Carolina
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of JOHN J. DUNCAN, Jr., Tennessee
Columbia VERNON J. EHLERS, Michigan
JERROLD NADLER, New York FRANK A. LoBIONDO, New Jersey
CORRINE BROWN, Florida JERRY MORAN, Kansas
BOB FILNER, California GARY G. MILLER, California
EDDIE BERNICE JOHNSON, Texas HENRY E. BROWN, Jr., South
GENE TAYLOR, Mississippi Carolina
ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
LEONARD L. BOSWELL, Iowa TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania
TIM HOLDEN, Pennsylvania SAM GRAVES, Missouri
BRIAN BAIRD, Washington BILL SHUSTER, Pennsylvania
RICK LARSEN, Washington JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas
MICHAEL E. CAPUANO, Massachusetts SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
TIMOTHY H. BISHOP, New York Virginia
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine JIM GERLACH, Pennsylvania
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California CHARLES W. DENT, Pennsylvania
DANIEL LIPINSKI, Illinois CONNIE MACK, Florida
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii LYNN A WESTMORELAND, Georgia
JASON ALTMIRE, Pennsylvania JEAN SCHMIDT, Ohio
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York VERN BUCHANAN, Florida
HARRY E. MITCHELL, Arizona ROBERT E. LATTA, Ohio
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, Pennsylvania BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
JOHN J. HALL, New York ANH ``JOSEPH'' CAO, Louisiana
STEVE KAGEN, Wisconsin AARON SCHOCK, Illinois
STEVE COHEN, Tennessee PETE OLSON, Texas
LAURA A. RICHARDSON, California
ALBIO SIRES, New Jersey
DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
SOLOMON P. ORTIZ, Texas
PHIL HARE, Illinois
JOHN A. BOCCIERI, Ohio
MARK H. SCHAUER, Michigan
BETSY MARKEY, Colorado
PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama
MICHAEL E. McMAHON, New York
THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia
DINA TITUS, Nevada
HARRY TEAGUE, New Mexico
VACANCY
(ii)
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public Buildings, and Emergency
Management
ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of Columbia, Chair
BETSY MARKEY, Colorado MARIO DIAZ-BALART, Florida
MICHAEL H. MICHAUD, Maine TIMOTHY V. JOHNSON, Illinois
HEATH SHULER, North Carolina SAM GRAVES, Missouri
PARKER GRIFFITH, Alabama SHELLEY MOORE CAPITO, West
RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri Virginia
TIMOTHY J. WALZ, Minnesota MARY FALLIN, Oklahoma
MICHAEL A. ARCURI, New York BRETT GUTHRIE, Kentucky
CHRISTOPHER P. CARNEY, ANH ``JOSEPH'' CAO, Louisiana
Pennsylvania, Vice Chair PETE OLSON, Texas
DONNA F. EDWARDS, Maryland
THOMAS S. P. PERRIELLO, Virginia
JAMES L. OBERSTAR, Minnesota
(Ex Officio)
(iii)
CONTENTS
Page
Summary of Subject Matter........................................ vi
TESTIMONY
Manning, Tim, Deputy Administrator, National Preparedness
Directorate, Federal Emergency Management Agency............... 6
Riggen, Trevor, Senior Director, Direct Services, American Red
Cross.......................................................... 6
Shriver, Mark, Chairman, National Commission on Children and
Disasters...................................................... 6
Vaughn, John, Chairperson, National Council on Disability........ 6
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY MEMBERS OF CONGRESS
Carnahan, Hon. Russ, of Missouri................................. 40
Norton, Hon. Eleanor Holmes, of the District of Columbia......... 41
Oberstar, Hon. James L., of Minnesota............................ 43
PREPARED STATEMENTS SUBMITTED BY WITNESSES
Manning, Tim..................................................... 45
Riggen, Trevor................................................... 61
Shriver, Mark.................................................... 71
Vaughn, John..................................................... 83
SUBMISSIONS FOR THE RECORD
Manning, Tim, Deputy Administrator, National Preparedness
Directorate, Federal Emergency Management Agency, reponses to
questions from the Subcommittee................................ 50
Riggen, Trevor, Senior Director, Direct Services, American Red
Cross, responses to questions from the Subcommittee............ 68
Shriver, Mark, Chairman, National Commission on Children and
Disasters, responses to questions from the Subcommittee........ 78
Vaughn, John, Chairperson, National Council on Disability,
responses to questions from the Subcommittee................... 110
ADDITIONS TO THE RECORD
Office of Emergency Preparedness - City of New Orleans, Lt.
Colonel, Jerry Sneed:
Written testimony.......................................... 123
Fact Sheets................................................ 129
[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT]
HEARING ON LOOKING OUT FOR THE VERY YOUNG, THE ELDERLY AND OTHERS WITH
SPECIAL NEEDS: LESSONS FROM KATRINA AND RELATED DISASTERS
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Tuesday, October 20, 2009
House of Representatives,
Subcommittee on Economic Development, Public
Buildings and Emergency Management,
Committee on Transportation and Infrastructure,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:12 p.m., in
Room 2167, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Eleanor Holmes
Norton [chairwoman of the Subcommittee] presiding.
Ms. Norton. Welcome to today's important hearing.
On September the 7th, 2007, Representative Corrine Brown,
who is trying to join us this afternoon, introduced H.R. 3495,
the Kids in Disasters Well-Being, Safety, and Health Act of
2007, a bill I was pleased to cosponsor. Provisions of H.R.
3495 were later incorporated into H.R. 2764, the Consolidated
Appropriations Act of 2008, which became public law number as
shall be indicated in December.
H.R. 3495 created a National Commission on Children and
Disasters to conduct a comprehensive study, examining and
assessing the needs of children as they relate to recovery,
preparation, and response for all hazards, including
catastrophes, disasters, and emergencies.
Hurricane Katrina exposed many problems concerning the
Nation's ability to meet the needs of children during
disasters. About a quarter of the people who lived in areas
damaged or flooded by Hurricane Katrina were under age 18. More
than 400,000 children under the age of 5 lived in or were
evacuated from counties and parishes that were declared
disaster areas by FEMA as a result of Hurricane Katrina.
The vulnerability of kids presented many unique issues. For
example, 5,192 children were reported missing or displaced by
the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as a
result of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and it took 6-1/2 months
to reunite the last child separated from her family. In
addition, 1,100 schools were closed immediately following
Hurricane Katrina.
These statistics reveal the importance of examining the
special needs of children in disasters. A specific focus on
children, therefore, is justifiably the Commission's special
concern.
Although we took a proactive role in directing the creation
of a commission concerning the well-being, safety, and health
of children in disasters, we had previously recognized the
importance of assuring that FEMA addresses the needs of all
vulnerable populations caught in disasters. FEMA is responsible
for encouraging local and State governments to plan for
evacuations of all special needs populations.
Our post-Katrina Emergency Management Reform Act of 2006
requires FEMA to other appoint a disabilities coordinator to
ensure that the needs of individuals with disabilities are
properly addressed in a disaster. The special needs population
must also include hospital and nursing home patients who may
not be able to move quickly because of their health. The worst
example during Hurricane Katrina involved 34 people who died in
a nursing home waiting for help for days in the heat of August
without power, air conditioning, sanitation, or running water
at temperatures in the building approaching 110 degrees. Some
of the elderly and disabled in New Orleans simply drowned when
they were left behind.
The New York Times reported on the work of Dr. Ann Powell,
a physician who was working in the middle of Hurricane Katrina
and was also forced to make several difficult decisions in the
absence of clear standards of care for very sick patients
trapped in her hospital. Since Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Powell
has been a leading proponent for changing the law and
establishing a standard of care in the event of disaster or
pandemic.
Persons with disabilities are the third largest minority
group in the United States, numbering over 32 million. If
people with impairments are included, the number increases to
over 51 million. In addition, there are approximately 5 million
disabled children and youth under the age of 18.
After Hurricane Katrina, Congress recognized that the
disabled must receive special focused attention. Now FEMA must
use the National Commission on Children and Disasters' final
interim report to think critically and objectively about
guidance to State and local jurisdictions on the care of
children, in particular in a disaster. Children and other
vulnerable populations have unique needs that demand focused
action plans that ensure the same survival for them in disaster
as for other Americans.
Several of our witnesses today have stories to share that
will remind us of what is at stake for children and citizens
with disabilities and why there must be no more delay in
building a comprehensive plan for addressing the needs of our
children and other vulnerable populations in a disaster.
I welcome today's witnesses, look forward to their
testimony and am pleased to hear any opening remarks from our
Ranking Member, Mr. Diaz-Balart.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Let me thank you first, Madam Chairwoman,
for holding this important hearing. As a Floridian this is the
kind of hearing that hits home, literally hits home.
Last month we held a hearing on the Integrated Public Alert
and Warning System and whether those with disabilities or those
with limited English proficiency are able to adequately receive
alerts and warnings when an imminent hurricane, storm, or other
disaster is coming. Now, unfortunately we found that much work
still remains to be done.
Today we are focusing more broadly on the issues of whether
emergency preparation, response, and recovery--if those efforts
have adequately or do adequately address the needs of the very
young, of the elderly, and others who--varied others who may
have also a number of different special needs.
In 2004, President Bush issued an executive order
establishing that it is the policy of the Federal Government to
ensure that the needs of individuals with disabilities are
incorporated in the planning for disasters.
In 2008, Congress established a National Commission on
Children and Disasters to study and report on the needs of
children in preparing for and to respond after disasters.
Congress also charged the National Council on Disability with
examining the inclusion of people with disabilities in
emergency preparation and established a disability coordinator
within FEMA.
So there have been some efforts and there has obviously
been some emphasis from both the executive and also Congress.
Notwithstanding these efforts, unfortunately, work still
remains to be done.
For example, according to the National Council on
Disability, many emergency managers and people with
disabilities remain unprepared for a disaster and disaster
planning continues without full consultation or even
participation of people with disabilities, which is obviously
contrary to what we are trying to do. And as highlighted in the
National Commission on Children and Disasters' interim report,
there are still inadequacies for the care of children in
various aspects of emergency management. Again, we still have a
long way to go.
This implementation of clear policies is absolutely
unacceptable because the consequences, as the Chairwoman was
saying a little while ago, can be very dire and tragic.
Following Hurricane Katrina, thousands of children were
separated from their families and there were so many accounts
of individuals with disabilities and seniors who were unable to
evacuate, and we have seen and we know what resulted from that
scenario.
With nearly half of our population either living with
disability or under the age of 18, we must ensure that the
interests and the needs of these individuals are fully, fully
incorporated in our planning, in our response to and recovery
from disasters. And as we will hear today, each of these
categories of individuals, whether it is children or seniors,
people with disabilities, have unique, unique issues that must
be examined and addressed in our emergency management system,
again, as the Chairwoman so eloquently said a little while ago.
Otherwise the consequences can be tragic.
I again thank you all for being here. It is a privilege to
have you all here. I appreciate your time. I look forward to
hearing from the witnesses, Madam Chairwoman, and I thank you
for having this very important hearing.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Diaz-Balart.
In light of the fact that the author of the bill has
arrived and is a Subcommittee Chair on a parallel Committee, I
am going to ask Ms. Brown if she has any opening remarks at
this time?
First, I want to ask unanimous consent that the gentlewoman
from Florida be allowed to participate in today's Subcommittee
hearing.
Without objection, so ordered.
Ms. Brown. Thank you, Madam Chair. I thank the Committee
for letting me join this hearing today. In this Subcommittee
this is a very important topic. In my home State of Florida we
deal with the aftermaths of hurricanes every year and have
struggled to deal with the unique needs of these vulnerable
populations.
I look forward to listening to the comments made by our
outstanding panelists and to move forward on this very
important issue as to how to protect our Nation's children,
elderly citizens, and others with special needs during a major
disaster. In particular, I want to thank Mark Shriver for his
leadership on the Children's Commission. Thank you.
Nearly 2 years ago, I worked to pass the KIDS WISH Act, a
bill which established a National Commission on Children and
Disaster, the commission whose representative Mark Shriver is
here today to report back to us on these most important
findings and recommendations and what have you done in the 2
years of study to examine the root causes and challenges as
they relate to the needs of children during and after all
hazardous disasters and emergencies.
During the events and aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, our
Nation saw the tremendous gap in our emergency management
response and recovery. We saw this to be especially true with
regards to children. Indeed, children's needs are unique and
are not as easy to carry out in an emergency planning for
adults. Congress as a body, working along with numerous groups
on this extremely important issue here today, must identify and
invest in and prepare response and recovery plans for children
to ensure that what we saw during Hurricane Katrina does not
ever happen again. I want to repeat. We in Congress have to
make sure that what happened with Hurricane Katrina never
happens again in this country.
Perhaps what is most troubling to me about the current
state of emergency preparedness system as it relates to our
children is that the questions to this date remain unanswered.
For example, will the shelter have diapers, baby food, and
children's medication? Are there former sex offenders in the
shelter? How do disaster survivors find their children if they
are separated during an evacuation?
Certainly if anyone sits down and seriously thinks about
all the various needs of children, he or she will quickly
realize that many of our communities, schools, and States and
local emergency managers do not have the concrete answers. So
over the past 2 years this new commission, the Nation's
Commission on Children and Disasters, has worked to come up
with solution to these questions. I understand that just last
week the National Commission on Children and Disasters
delivered its interim report to President Obama and Congress,
in which you identify several shortcomings in disaster
preparation, response, and recovery and provided
recommendations designed to make children an immediate priority
to disaster planning.
So again, I look forward to hearing from the panelists
today and in particular the recommendations being put forward
by the Commission so that we can implement as soon as possible.
I have instructed my staff to draft the Commission
recommendation into legislation, and I hope that we as a
Congress are able to turn them into law.
Thank you again, Madam Chairwoman, for this opportunity to
participate in this very important discussion, and I yield back
the balance of my time.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Representative Brown. Mr.
Carnahan, do you have any opening remarks?
Mr. Carnahan. Thank you, Madam Chairman. Just briefly I
want to thank you and Ranking Member Diaz-Balart for holding
this important hearing. I thank the witnesses for being here
and really shining a light on special needs individuals in the
event of natural disasters, whether that be children, the
elderly, disabled, or others. This is a very important
component of our overall preparedness, and I thank you for
contributing to that.
We definitely, from looking back, can tell we need to have
a more holistic approach, a more comprehensive approach to
incorporating these special needs, and I have particular
interest, being a representative from the State of Missouri, in
terms of how our State is hit and particularly our region along
the Mississippi River. We are the among the most frequent
States for natural disasters, floods, tornadoes. We are on the
New Madrid fault line, and we had a bout of ice storms not long
ago. So we have been hit by many, but some of the same issues
come up and we look forward to hearing from you and thank you
for your work.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Congressman Carnahan.
Ms. Edwards, have you any opening remarks?
Ms. Edwards. I do, Madam Chairwoman. Thank you very much
and thank you in advance to each of the witnesses for your
testimony today.
There is probably not one among us, at least here in the
Washington area, that doesn't remember being separated from a
child on 9/11 and the confusion that that caused and the need
for the kind of coordinated response that you will be
testifying to today. My son was actually, in fact, on Capitol
Hill on that day, and I remember as a parent being very
concerned about how to get to him in the wake of that disaster.
And of course these disasters that we have to prepare for are
both natural disasters and they are manmade disasters. We need
only point to the experiences of the Oklahoma City bombing and
the vulnerability of children in that disaster and any number
of natural disasters, whether hurricanes, tornadoes, fires and
the like. So I appreciate your testimony today.
Just yesterday I was out in Prince George's County in
Maryland with first responders looking at the kind of advanced
technology that they have to identify places, institutions,
elder care facilities, assisted living facilities, child care
facilities, schools of greatest vulnerability, and using their
technology to make sure that they have their eye on the pulse
when it comes to coordinating response in the event of an
emergency. And obviously we need that in our own districts, but
certainly in our States and in our region.
The tragedy of Hurricane Katrina and these other disasters
really point to the need to coordinate a response for our most
vulnerable populations, children, the elderly, disabled, those
who are in need of immediate medical attention who might be
separated from their providers.
So I hope today that we are also able to look forward at a
set of standards and a training and assistance for child care
providers and for those who work in assisted living and other
facilities with these vulnerable populations who often report
that they are at a loss as to what they might do in an
emergency situation. And so I look forward to learning from you
today and to working with my colleagues. And thank you,
especially to the leadership of Representative Brown, to make
certain that we consider these vulnerable populations in all of
our emergency planning.
And I yield the balance of my time.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Ms. Edwards.
We will hear testimony in the order in which you are
sitting. First Tim Manning, Deputy Administrator, National
Preparedness Directorate of FEMA.
TESTIMONY OF TIM MANNING, DEPUTY ADMINISTRATOR, NATIONAL
PREPAREDNESS DIRECTORATE, FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY;
MARK SHRIVER, CHAIRMAN, NATIONAL COMMISSION ON CHILDREN AND
DISASTERS; JOHN VAUGHN, CHAIRPERSON, NATIONAL COUNCIL ON
DISABILITY; AND TREVOR RIGGEN, SENIOR DIRECTOR, DIRECT
SERVICES, AMERICAN RED CROSS
Mr. Manning. Chairwoman Norton, Ranking Member Diaz-Balart,
and other distinguished Members of the Subcommittee, good
afternoon. It is a privilege to be before you today on behalf
of FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security, and I am glad
to join my colleagues from the Red Cross, National Council on
Disability, and the National Commission on Children and
Disasters.
I am also pleased to report to you that FEMA has
established a Children's Working Group as of August, 2009, to
serve as the Agency's primary advocate for children. The
working group is responsible for ensuring that children's needs
are incorporated into all of our disaster preparedness,
response and recovery efforts, and coordinates the resources
necessary to meet the needs of children in times of disaster.
The group is chaired by a very senior member of the
Department's leadership team and its members represent all
sectors of FEMA.
Specifically, the Children's Working Group is focused on
the following key areas: child-specific guidance for
evacuation, sheltering, and relocation; disaster-related needs
of children with disabilities; tracking and reunification of
families; coordinated case management support; enhanced
preparedness for child care centers; enhanced national
planning, including the incorporation of children into national
planning scenarios and exercises; incorporation of children's
needs into grant guidance; improved recovery coordination
across the Federal Government with State, tribal, and local
partners in support of children's education, health, and
housing; consideration as to how the Federal family can help
ensure child care centers are able to rebuild and restore
services more quickly following a disaster; and increased
public awareness efforts to educate families and protect
children during disasters.
Historically, the U.S. Has approached disaster planning by
focusing heavily on the needs of what we may refer to as the
general population and has not devoted sufficient advanced
attention to those who may have special needs and thus require
special specific and immediate attention in a crisis.
Madam Chairwoman, FEMA is changing this paradigm. We
believe that children, the elderly, persons with disability,
and other special needs populations must be fully and
consistently integrated into preparedness efforts and planning
efforts at every level of government from the beginning. We
must avoid putting planning considerations specific to those
with special needs in a separate box and instead build better
disaster response and recovery plans that account for the fact
that those with special needs comprise a significant percentage
of the population. One of our top goals is to institutionalize
this approach across our agency and throughout emergency
management.
In December of 2007, Congress created the bipartisan
National Commission on Children and Disasters. The Commission
has evaluated existing laws, regulations, policies, and
programs that affect children in disasters, and we have
received the interim report and look forward to the time report
in 2010. FEMA has been meeting with the Commission regularly
and looks forward to working with the Committee and Congress
and implementing the Commission's recommendations.
Rather than waiting to move forward, however, FEMA has
established a Children's Working Group, allowing us to address
the Commission's recommendations in a proactive manner. For
example, we have participated in the creation of a shelter
supply list in concert with the Commission, the Red Cross, and
other subject matter experts in emergency management and
pediatric care. This list identifies the basic supplies
necessary to sustain and support infants and children up to 3
years of age for a 24-hour period. The Commission recommends
State and local jurisdictions provide caches of these supplies
that support the care of children in mass care shelters for a
minimum of 72 hours.
FEMA has built a strong network of both public and private
partner organizations that will help unify and strengthen our
combined capabilities. For instance, FEMA has worked with the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children to establish
a National Emergency Child Locator Center. FEMA is working hard
to ensure that its own basic planning addresses special needs
populations, that we are supporting and assisting our States,
tribes and localities in this regard. We are reinforcing the
critical need and personal preparedness to encourage
individuals and families to adequately prepare themselves for
disaster events, recognizing that better individual
preparedness translates into better community preparedness and
resilience.
Madam Chair, in conclusion, FEMA and the Department of
Homeland Security are committed to advancing our Nation's
preparedness by emphasizing the disaster needs of our Nation's
most vulnerable citizens. Our efforts must begin with personal
preparedness, a process of individual thinking and
consideration of basic steps that each of us and our families
must take to prevent and prepare for the next disaster.
In times of crisis government plays a critical role in
coordinating the response and recovery efforts, especially in
protecting and providing for the most vulnerable members of our
population. Members of our communities with special needs
cannot simply fall to secondary planning considerations but
must be one of the central focuses of our planning, response,
and recovery.
Thank you, Madam Chairwoman and Members of the
Subcommittee, for allowing me to testify today. I am happy to
answer any questions that you may have.
Ms. Norton. Thank you very much, Deputy Administrator
Manning.
Before we go to Mr. Shriver I note that our very busy Full
Committee Chairman has come by this hearing. We very much
appreciate his being here for whatever time he can devote, and
I think it is an indication of the importance of this subject
matter to the Committee and the Subcommittee that the Chairman,
who I believe has more Subcommittees than any other Committee,
is here and to offer his own comments, which I will ask him to
do at this time.
Mr. Oberstar. Thank you, Madam Chair. I don't want to
interrupt the flow of testimony but I do want to welcome the
Commission and especially Mark Shriver, a friend of very, very
longstanding. Not only Mark but his mother, Eunice, whose
passing we all mourn but who is remembered in my hometown of
Chisholm at the center, the Range Center, as it is known,
center for intellectually and physically challenged people. And
Madam Chair, Eunice Shriver dedicated that facility--she was
the inspiration for it to start. She came for its dedication
and there is a facility in her name, the Eunice Shriver
Swimming Pool, which is something she suggested for physically
and intellectually challenged persons, and it is regularly used
not only by those who are resident at the center, but also
people of the community. She is known and loved and her memory
is treasured in Chisholm, Minnesota, and elsewhere around the
country.
At an event that we had just recently, I noted frequently I
would see Sarge and Eunice and Mark at mass in Potomac at Our
Lady of Mercy, and Eunice would never forget to ask about the
Range Center, its founder Veda Ponikvar, the publisher of our
newspaper, and always sent her best regards, and let me tell
you people were in tears when I told that story. And Mark
Shriver continues in the spirit of the Shriver-Kennedy family
of giving of himself to great public causes.
Thank you. You were the inspiration for this legislation to
create the Commission, and we welcome your testimony here today
and thank you for your continuing contribution.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
Mr. Shriver, you have our condolences. As you know, you
have the condolences of the Nation on the passing of your
mother, who contributed so much to the Nation and the world for
children and people with disabilities.
We will hear next from the Chairman of the National
Commission on Children and Disasters, Mr. Shriver.
Mr. Shriver. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. And
Congressman Oberstar, thank you very much for your kind
comments, and I am very glad that you mentioned me going to
mass; so hopefully that will make my father happy as well. So
thank you very much.
Ranking Member Diaz-Balart, thank you for your kind
comments, Congressman Carnahan, Congresswoman Edwards, and of
course Congresswoman Brown, thank you for your leadership on
this issue. You really picked up the ball and made it happen in
the House under this Committee and we are awfully grateful for
your support a couple of years ago and making this hearing
happen today.
I am Mark Shriver. I am Chair of the National Commission on
Children and Disasters, and it really is an honor to be up here
on this panel to discuss this very important issue, Madam
Chair.
I think for the last 10 years when you look at it, and for
so many of us, especially for children, this will be remembered
as a disaster decade. Our kids have looked at TV and from their
windows they have seen skyscrapers collapsing, communities
under water, entire neighborhoods leveled by tornadoes or
engulfed by fire. And during so many of those events, children
have been left vulnerable because of a disaster management
system that treats them as little adults and doesn't account
for their unique needs.
You have heard, as you said, Madam Chair, some of the
statistics that are truly appalling. After Katrina it took up
to 6 months to reunify the last child with their family. After
Ike and Gustav shelters didn't have enough supplies, including
diapers, formula, and cribs. In many cases children are not
counted separately from the general population in the number of
shelters, making it difficult to provide supplies and services
to meet their specific needs. Research conducted just a few
months ago showed that only seven States meet the basic child
protection standards for schools and child care facilities
across this country. And the statistics in New Orleans after
Katrina and Rita show that there were 15,731 daycare slots at
266 licensed centers before the storm hit, and a year after 80
percent of those centers and 75 percent of those slots were
still gone. And we often wonder why New Orleans has not had the
economic development that it needs. When you don't have child
care centers, child care facilities up and running, families
with young children will not come back to work.
Children represent 25 percent of the American population.
There are 74 million kids, 18 and under. We need to put their
lives and well-being at the front and center. The Federal
Government and its partners have not made children a higher
priority than pets in disaster planning and management. I have
to say, Madam Chair, that is outrageous. Instead, children are
considered at-risk or special needs population and they are
grouped in among the elderly, persons with disabilities, the
medically dependent, persons with limited English proficiency;
yet they make up 25 percent of the American population.
Consequently, they are given less attention and resources when
disaster plans are written and exercised when equipment and
supplies are purchased. Congresswoman Edwards, you spoke about
that. But those efforts are not addressed for children.
So Congress created the National Commission on Children and
Disasters to look at this cycle of benign neglect. We issued
our interim report last week. We gave it to President Obama and
Members of Congress. The interim report identified a couple of
disaster-- shortcomings in disaster preparedness, response, and
recovery and provides recommendations to make children an
immediate priority in disaster planning.
For the purpose of today's hearing I will focus quickly on
just a few of the 21 recommendations provided in the interim
report.
The first one, Madam Chair, is to incorporate children as
an immediate priority within the White House and the Federal
Emergency Management Agency. The White House plays a central
role in leadership and coordinating role in advising the
President on matters affecting national security, including
disaster.
The Commission has recommended to the President that a
coordinating council be formed composed of senior White House
staff and collaborating with the National Security Council,
Domestic Policy Council, and the National Security staff to
serve as a focal point for presidential policy development
specific to children and disasters.
As legislators, I would ask you to ask those entities
whether they ever hear about children's needs in planning for
and responding to disasters, and I will tell you the answer is
unequivocally no. They don't hear at the higher levels of
government about children's needs.
FEMA also plays a central role in coordinating support
during disaster planning and management for partners,
communities, and citizens, and Tim spoke a little bit about
that. Administrator Fugate created a Children's Working Group
that serves as a centralized platform across the agency, but as
Tim mentioned, this just started in August of last year and I
hope that as legislators you will keep pressure on FEMA to make
sure that that Children's Working Group has access to the
Administrator and really does focus on children's needs.
Our second recommendation is to provide a safe and secure
emergency shelter environment for children, including access to
age-appropriate services and supplies. The Commission
facilitated the development, as Tim mentioned, of standards and
indicators for disaster care for children. This is being
piloted by the American Red Cross during the 2009 hurricane
season. Standards and indicators will be evaluated and revised
as necessary and incorporated in a comprehensive document to
provide general shelter guidelines and training for shelter
managers and staff. The Commission also facilitated the
development of a list of age-appropriate shelter supplies for
infants and toddlers. Based on this list, Federal, State and
local disaster supplies can be created or expanded to support
shelter managers with essential and cost-reimbursable supplies
like baby formula, diapers, and cribs.
The third recommendation is that Congress should require
tougher preparedness requirements for child care providers and
increase support for child care services in the immediate
aftermath of and recovery from a disaster. Congress can take
immediate steps to prioritize child care disaster preparedness,
response, and recovery: Include a requirement in the
reauthorization of the Child Care and Development Block Grant
that requires child care providers to have comprehensive all-
hazard material plans that at a minimum incorporates specific
capabilities, such as sheltering in place, evacuation,
relocation, family reunification, and children with special
needs; require child care provider disaster plans to be
coordinated with State and local disaster operation plans;
provide reimbursement from the Stafford Act to support child
care services to displaced families, establish temporary
disaster child care and repair and reconstruction of child care
facilities. We know, Madam Chair, that Administrator Fugate is
looking at that issue, but I would ask that the Committee work
to make sure that that decision is expedited and we don't have
to wait.
Finally, and I will wrap up, the Federal Government must
make up its mind to establish a single holistic disaster case
management program with an emphasis on achieving positive
outcomes for all children and families. After Katrina and Rita,
the Federal Government provided at least $290 million for
disaster case management services. These programs had poor
outcomes and illuminated the need for greater coordination and
program evaluation in the provision of disaster case management
services.
The Commission recognizes that FEMA has authorized four
pilot disaster case management programs following Gustav and
Ike, but it is unacceptable that after a year FEMA and its
partners still haven't worked out a case management system that
is comprehensive, effective and deployed in a rapid manner.
In conclusion, the Commission strongly believes that the
best way to instill public confidence in the way our Nation
prepares for, responds to, and recovers from a disaster is to
make sure the needs of children are an immediate priority. In
the aftermath of a disaster, effectively providing for the
safety and well-being of kids will provide greater stability
and help families and communities recover.
Thank you, Madam Chair and members of the Subcommittee, for
this time to talk, and we look forward to working with you on
legislation that will make a better situation for kids all
across the country.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Shriver and especially for your
work in chairing this Commission.
The next witness is John Vaughn, the Chair of the National
Council on Disability.
Mr. Vaughn.
Mr. Vaughn. Madam Chairwoman, Ranking Member Diaz-Balart,
and Members of the Subcommittee, on behalf of the National
Council on Disability, thank you for the opportunity to talk
about this critical issue here in our country.
The testimony I will offer today is based on NCD's work in
emergency preparedness that started back in 2004. Simply put,
NCD's interest is in a coherent national disaster management
framework that is inclusive of people with disabilities. When
we say "coherent" we are envisioning leadership that involves
effective government coordination and collaboration across
Federal, State and local levels of government. When we say
"inclusive," we are talking about a transparent ongoing
consideration of people with disabilities within the same
framework as nondisabled people.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, approximately 54
million Americans have disabilities. The incidence of
disability cuts across all age groups; however, there is a
greater prevalence of disability as people age. For example,
middle-aged people have a disability rate of about 22 percent;
65-to 70- year olds about 44 percent; and over 80 some 75
percent. By 2030 the population of people 65 and older will
nearly double, comprising nearly 20 percent of the U.S.
population. As a consequence, it is likely that disability will
touch every American's life either personally or through that
of a loved one. So when we talk about considerations of
``special needs'' populations in times of disaster, we are
really talking about a topic that affects or touches every
American.
I would like to note two of the major policy gaps we have
identified through our research. One, there is a lack of
involvement of people with disabilities in local planning
throughout all phases of the life cycle of an emergency.
Secondly, there is a lack of available resources to local
communities to address the emergency concerns of the local
community affecting all people and especially those with
disabilities. Here are a few quick examples that illustrate
these gaps:
One, people with disabilities are routinely excluded from
local drills, preparedness exercises, and other planning
processes. Two, one study noted that of 30 disaster sites, only
27 percent of the emergency managers had taken advantage of and
completed available training on disabilities. Three people with
disabilities remain largely forgotten during the response phase
of a disaster. And, four, emergency warnings for people with
disabilities is woefully inadequate. Most disaster warnings are
only handled through a conventional communication system which
is usually inaccessible to people with cognitive hearing and
vision disabilities.
From our research it is clear that much work needs to be
done. In order to build a coherent and inclusive national
disaster management framework, we would suggest the following:
That Federal grant requirements and incentives be used to
ensure the direct involvement of people with disabilities in
State and local funding proposals to FEMA and to DHS. Under
such an approach, judging of State and local funding proposals
would necessitate establishing benchmarks and evaluation
criteria that demonstrate inclusion and address the needs of
people with disabilities.
The challenges faced by people with disabilities during
emergencies shouldn't be viewed merely as those of a special
interest group because planning for and accommodating people
with disabilities often means that we are better equipped to
serve all people during an emergency. History has taught us
that failure to plan for inclusion is a plan to fail.
I thank you for the opportunity to be with you, and I will
look forward to any questions.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Vaughn.
The final witness is Trevor Riggen, Senior Director of
Direct Services, American Red Cross. Mr. Riggen.
Mr. Riggen. Good afternoon, Chairwoman Norton, Ranking
Member Diaz-Balart, and distinguished Members of the
Subcommittee. Thank you for this opportunity to be here today
and speak to this important issue.
As mentioned, my name is Trevor Riggen and I lead domestic
service delivery for the American Red Cross.
When disaster strikes the American Red Cross is there to
provide shelter, food, critical resources and support to those
in need. Our first priority is to ensure that those affected
have a safe place to stay, food to eat, and the tools they need
to start their recovery. How our organization and the sector as
a whole meets these challenges can go a long way toward
ensuring a more effective and inclusive relief effort to
benefit those in need.
Moving forward, as the Ranking Member mentioned, there is a
lot of work ahead of us to meet the critical challenges and
concerns laid out in both the interim report by the Commission
and NCD. To build on that important work, we come today with
four key recommendations: One, government and local agencies
plan for a more permanent housing solution that is critical to
families with children, the elderly and people with
disabilities that are prioritized for assistance.
Two, that children are best served if the regular routine
of their day-to-day life can be restored as quickly as
possible. Therefore, we recommend that we all work together to
make sure that schools can open as quickly as possible after a
disaster.
Our third recommendation is we support accelerating the
development of a national recovery framework. This important
resource will help to coordinate the vast number of agencies
that are willing to come forward for long-term recovery.
And, finally, children, the elderly and people with
disabilities must be considered as distinct populations and not
part of a larger special needs category. This last
recommendation I would like to focus on for the rest of my
time.
Over time the term "special needs" has become a catch-all
for any person who may need additional services beyond the,
quote/unquote, average survivor. As a result, disaster plans
have become a lengthy list of appendices in an attempt to
capture the multitude of possibilities and needs created by
disasters. The assumption that the majority of persons fit in
the average or one-size-fits-all category has proven to be
false and plans to meet the needs of this entire community must
change accordingly.
In short, special needs is not an adequate description. As
we all agree, children are not small adults and people with
disabilities and the elderly have distinct needs that demand
our attention.
Over the past 4 years, the Red Cross has made significant
improvements on our focus of these distinct needs. With the
help of key partners like NCD, Save the Children, and FEMA, we
are beginning to both define the needs and build those
requirements into our general planning. One example of this is
the proper resourcing of our shelters. Based on the analysis of
critical barriers, we have strategically stockpiled key
resources to increase accessibility and provide critical
durable medical equipment to our clients. This includes items
such as transferable cots, adaptive equipment for showers and
toilets, and essential communications equipment.
The Red Cross is also currently working with FEMA on the
development of a national capability to resource shelter with
caregivers. This will assist local government in the
identification of a cadre of resources to help fill that gap
and provide for the daily living assistance that many of our
clients require and deserve.
Additionally, we have implemented important training to
enhance workers' awareness and their technical ability for
assisting those with disabilities and the elderly. Over 5,000
Red Cross volunteers have been trained so far, and we
anticipate even further enhancements to this curriculum moving
forward.
Most recently we have worked closely with the Commission on
Children and Disasters to develop some exciting tools to codify
the standards and best practices for children in shelters. This
includes the much needed supply list of critical items we need
when disaster strikes, including diapers, formula, bedding, and
other basic necessities. We are beginning now to aggressively
move forward to resource our chapter structure with the
identified supplies for children and find the appropriate
balance of both caches of these supplies and locally accessible
items through partners and vendors.
A great example of this work is right here in the D.C.
Area. Our local chapter, the National Capital Region, has
worked closely with the National Organization on Disabilities
to ensure that services and shelters are accessible to people
with disabilities, and this includes a review of all shelters
for accessibility and identification of specific items that
would create a barrier to anyone needing access. The chapter
has also received key government funding to secure additional
equipment and supplies here locally.
In conclusion, Madam Chairwoman and distinguished Members,
thank you for allowing us to testify today. We must all plan to
serve our entire community after a disaster, and I thank you
for your interest and concern on this important issue. I look
forward to any questions you may have.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Riggen, and I want to thank all
the witnesses for their helpful testimony.
Now I am going to ask one overriding question of all
witnesses. Then I am going to go to the Ranking Member and to
other Members before I ask another set of questions that I
have.
When we are concerned about treatment of people who are
identifiably a part of a group, we tend to focus on them as a
part of that group. As you all are aware and as your testimony
makes clear, people don't come in ones and twosies. Some might
have thought that this report would be called--if it had been
any other disaster, it would probably have been called
"families and children." There are very few children in foster
care, and if they are they are also not supposed to be
unsupervised. I want to make sure that in fighting the last war
we are also fighting the next war.
The same is true, Mr. Vaughn, when it comes to people with
disabilities. Most of them do not live alone. I was
particularly impressed with Mr. Vaughn's testimony about the
elderly because a good number of them live alone and would be
absolutely helpless if there were a disaster. They live alone.
They get around their homes well enough. They may even go to
the store and do some things for themselves. But you tell them
to be at shelter X, we are in trouble and they are in trouble.
So I am a little concerned that in focusing on people of a
specified group, whether those people are children or people
with disabilities, we may lose sight of the context in which--
where they live.
I will be very personal with you. I have a child who is now
a woman with Down's Syndrome. She is 39 years old and I am
pleased and proud that she lives with me, and so far as I can
make possible, always will live with me. I believe that
Katherine, if there were a terrible hurricane in Washington,
Katherine would not be traumatized if she were separated from
me. And guess what? I could be here. She could be at the lovely
institute for drama and such that she goes to every day. So the
chances are, at least given the hours that I have and the hours
that many parents have, I wouldn't even be there. The fact is
that the 6-1/2 months it took us to relocate some children with
their parents went less to children than to how we treated
families. Moreover, our focus on children comes because when we
found so many children disconnected from the living unit, we
were not prepared to deal with them as disconnected children.
We didn't have the supplies. We didn't have the personnel. We
didn't have the focus. So you would help me in looking at these
groups which we see as disparate. We think children and
families may live one way and we want to focus on children with
families who have to be handled in one way. We see that there
will be a special focus for people who are disabled and
elderly. But when you consider the disability coordinator, the
recommendations so far of the Commission and of others, I would
like to know whether your recommendations conceive of them in
the units where they are located or should be located were it
not for the disaster and what your recommendations have--what
recommendations you have to us about dealing with, first,
family, whether it is natural family or other reunifications,
as a function of whatever services we think we are supposed to
provide.
So beginning with you, Mr. Manning, I would like all four
of you to address the notion of the units in which these people
that we are discussing today will either already be a part of
or should be a part of if we are to provide them with the
services they need after a disaster. Then I will go down the
line.
Mr. Manning. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think that is of
course the most crucial part of our planning and our failure to
plan in the past, that we have built a planning system for
disaster preparedness, for emergency preparedness that focuses
on the general population, and then when we recognize or we
communicate with our partners that we have at the table today
that bring to our attention that we have forgotten about a
segment of our population, we tend to respond by the inclusion
of an additional planning guidance or the recommendation that
we write an additional plan to support and provide for those
members of the community.
What we have recognized is that what we need is a better
way to plan. We need a better system from the ground up so that
we incorporate the needs of all the members of a community, all
the members of our society, not a particular disability group
or children as an annex or an afterthought or an add-on to our
plans and our preparedness activities but one that cross cuts
from the beginning.
Administrator Fugate uses the example of having been
offered the opportunity to buy a certain number of cots for
sheltering and then a certain number of ADA compliant cots. And
he asks the question why am I buying two sets of cots? Why
don't we just buy ADA cots and they are available for use by
everyone? It is that kind of thinking that needs to permeate
what we do. It is a way of doing business, and it is one that
we are undertaking with great speed and due diligence to bring
across the entire mission set of FEMA and emergency management.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Manning. The greatest service
FEMA could have provided in Katrina was not diapers. A lot of
us know how to make do on that if you are going to have some to
us in a few days. The greatest service they could have provided
was advanced word to families about how to keep their children
with them no matter what, and then lots of things take care of
themselves once you are with your mama or your provider.
Mr. Shriver.
Mr. Shriver. Madam Chair, I think we need to do a better
job addressing the issue you have talked about. I mentioned the
child care issue and the child facilities that weren't rebuilt
in New Orleans and part of the reason that city is still
struggling. So I don't think we have looked comprehensively at
the needs of families, if that is what your question is getting
at. So we rebuild or put dollars through the Stafford Act for
facilities, for levees, and for schools. But if you have a
little kid--we have a 4-year-old. If you have a little kid who
is going to school in second grade and there is no place to put
your 4-year-old, you are not going to move back to New Orleans
or you are not going to move to D.C. So we don't, I don't
think, look comprehensively at the needs of families and
children within those families.
Child care facilities here in Washington D.C., if a dirty
bomb were to drop and you were evacuated and your daughter were
to go to a different place, the facility that she is at or the
place that she works at, I don't know if they are clear on
where they are going to evacuate your child where your child
is--and how your child is going to be reunified with you. If
your phones are jammed, is there a backup plan for your
daughter to reach out to another family member?
So we don't set minimum requirements for child care
facilities across this country or other facilities. Whether it
is a juvenile detention facility or the place where your
daughter is, I would be willing to bet you right now does not
have a comprehensive evacuation plan in place because the city,
this city, does not require it and most States in this country
don't require it. So they are not looking at kids' needs within
the family structure and when it is a child care facility.
I have great respect----
Ms. Norton. Is that true, Mr. Manning, that most cities
don't have an evacuation plan for special needs facilities?
Mr. Manning. Madam Chair, that is a local requirement and
that is most likely true that the vast majority do not.
Mr. Shriver. I am talking for your daughter, but also
through child care shelters--child care facilities across this
country. It is not uniform in Washington, D.C. We are actually
working with Councilman Evans right now to try to get
legislation to make those basic standards--or requirements part
of the law. And it is a no-cost or low-cost alternative. So we
are not looking at children within the family unit because we
don't really focus in on child care facilities which deal with
hundreds of thousands of kids in this city and millions of kids
across this country.
I think the present leadership of FEMA has done a great job
looking at children's needs and they have only been in office
for 4 months. But unfortunately when we respond--when there was
a response to American Samoa, when FEMA sent a team out there,
they did not take within the Department of Health and Human
Services the Administration for Children and Families which
focus in on children's needs. They took ASPR, which focuses in
on the health needs but is not focused in on the needs of
children.
You know, we can go back and forth about why that didn't
happen. I have great admiration for the Administrator, but I
think that should have been part of the plan. We should be
looking at not just the health needs of people impacted in
American Samoa but have experts on the ground that understand
the needs of children, the mental health needs of children.
If your daughter gets separated from you for hours, if not
days, that is going to cause some real issues for you and your
daughter. Imagine if your kid is 2 years old and separated and
the mental issues they are going to have to deal with, or a 5
or 6-year-old if their home is washed away, if they don't have
the resources there to deal with that.
So I think the answer is we have a lot of work to do in
making sure that children are, in particular in the case in
which I am talking, seen as a unit within the family and within
the larger society.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Shriver. Your answer leads me,
before I go on to Mr. Vaughn, to ask Mr. Manning whether or not
there is rulemaking going on to clarify that child care centers
can receive assistance in the event of disaster or, for that
matter, that the kinds of places where kids hang out, like boys
and girls clubs or even our own Head Start centers, would
qualify to receive assistance in the wake of a disaster?
Mr. Manning. Madam Chairwoman, yes. Currently facilities
that meet those descriptions that are private nonprofits or
nongovernmental organizations are eligible for disaster
assistance, and we are exploring how we may be able to extend
assistance beyond those facilities. Where you have for-profit
facilities, they are excluded, and we are looking at that
currently, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Manning. It is very important
that we focus where the children are, in families or in these
other facilities.
Now, Mr. Vaughn, I was impressed by what you said in regard
to the question I have asked because you mentioned the elderly
and people with disabilities. I mean we have people with very
diverse disabilities. Somebody who is completely blind who goes
to work every day is very different from someone who has to
stay at home because he is so hard of hearing that he does not
and has nobody to go out with him or the elderly person I
mentioned earlier.
Ms. Norton. Test the context in which disabled people live,
are we able to deal with them in context, in the groups where
they live or as individuals where they may live alone, Mr.
Vaughn?
Mr. Vaughn. Yes. In my written testimony to the Committee,
we talk about the holistic planning that needs to occur at the
national, local and State level, whether it be making sure at
the local level that there is temporary housing to deal with
the needs of families who get displaced or whatever. I think it
gets back on a lot of these to me--and I think in our
recommendation--that we need to get the availability of grants
to get that kind of planning done. I expect that--I serve in,
down in Florida where I live, on the local disability
committee. One issue just came up the other day. The issues
keep coming up. This had to do with the rising problem of
children with autism and the impact on shelters.
So I think everything gets to be very holistic, and we
really believe that there has just got to be more effort,
because I think what we have heard from all four of us, that a
lot of it is not getting done in the local communities. Living
in Florida like I do, on the west coast, we had four hurricanes
4 years ago in 1 year. So you had better be looking after your
own needs. But it has got to be a holistic approach to the
functional needs of everybody. As a blind person, I am
fortunate that my wife is sighted, but in a hurricane, I could
become where I am having to fend for myself.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Vaughn. Mr. Riggen, the Red
Cross, of course, has for decades had to deal with families,
children. This is nothing new for you. Would you tell us about
your experience and what you think--how people are handling
their context?
Mr. Riggen. I want to thank the Chairwoman for this
question because I think this really gets to the crux of the
issue we are talking about today. The family structure in a
shelter is very important, and I will start with the shelters.
Part of the recommendations that we worked with the Commission
on and what we are starting to develop now is to ensure that
families are held together in shelters very closely. We are
making sure the children are both protected and the family
structure remains resilient after a disaster which is extremely
important.
Ms. Norton. Did you find in Katrina that sometimes the
parents, because there were so many people, you know, were made
to sleep on cots here and the children on cots someplace else
in the children's section or something of that kind?
Mr. Riggen. It is an extreme case, especially in large
disasters or large shelters. It is extremely challenging
throughout a day when the resources are coming into the
shelter. Where the parents have to leave the shelter to get
resources and services, the children do get cordoned off
sometimes and that is what we are trying to avoid. We want to
get the family structure back. And worst-case scenarios, we
don't want shelters to split up based on need. We don't want
one part of the family to go to a special needs shelter and one
part in a general population shelter. We want the family to
stay intact. To have each type of shelter be able to absorb
that population is extremely critical.
The other piece on remaining in the family is the pictures
we have over here to the right from American Samoa, and this is
our partnership with Save the Children on the ground there.
There is some great work on working with children. What you
don't see is the casework that happens in the villages. This is
because we have to go to the family, and every family is
different. Disabilities can take all forms. They can be
cognitive, mental, physical. The issues of the elderly in that
family could be different. The family size can vary. The
individual casework, sending a worker, a volunteer to sit down
with a family and having them listen to the story, what are
your needs, how can we best meet those needs? If we can keep a
family in their home, that sends them forward on a recovery
much quicker than having them have to move to a shelter weeks
later.
So the casework piece is extremely important, and the
transition of that casework to long-term case management is
also extremely critical and we look forward to moving forward
on that.
Ms. Norton. That is really interesting. The notion of stay
in place if you can is a really interesting notion.
Mr. Diaz-Balart.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you very much, Madam Chairwoman.
Before I start, I would also be remiss if I did not recognize
also the great job that my colleague from Florida,
Representative Brown, has worked on these issues. She is a
tireless advocate for Florida, for her district but also for
children. I think I would be remiss if I didn't mention that.
Also, I thought Mr. Vaughn made a very interesting point and I
apologize because I am probably going to butcher it. So I am
going to paraphrase it. Mr. Vaughn, you basically stated that
when you plan and you do a better job with people with
disabilities, you help everybody because everybody benefits,
everybody does well, everybody is planned for better.
I have a couple questions for Mr. Manning. The integrated
planning system has been pretty widely criticized by this
Committee, as you know, and the emergency management community
as well as being too complicated, labor-intensive, just
difficult to implement at the State and local levels. Is that
going to be replaced? Are you looking at that scenario, your
scenario-based system with an all hazards type approach as
opposed to what we have now? Any idea what the status is on
that?
Mr. Manning. The integrated planning system is under
review. It is being reviewed. The review is being led by the
national security staff and the disaster readiness group, of
which FEMA and the Department of Homeland Security hold a
number of chairs. The emergency management community has had a
tradition of doing all hazards based planning where we do a
base plus annex planning. We do a base plan for those things
that cross-cut all types of disasters and specific annexes to
deal with the incident-specific issues. That is one of the more
prominent options that are back on the table for our future
planning system. There isn't a firm timeline for the completion
of that, but it is very actively being looked at.
Mr. Diaz-Balart. Thank you. I mentioned in my opening
statement that the post-Katrina Act explicitly requires FEMA to
coordinate with the National Council on Disabilities on all
aspects of the national preparedness system. How will you
ensure that FEMA implements this obviously very important
requirement and actively coordinates with the NCD and the
planning and preparation for disasters, which I think we have
heard is not quite there yet.
Mr. Manning. Yes, sir. We do have a very close working
relationship with the National Council on Disabilities.
Ms. Norton. Speak up, Mr. Manning, please.
Mr. Manning. I am sorry. I will move closer. As we come
into the review of the national response framework, which we
will be beginning shortly, there will be a disability community
as well as all of the--people representing all factions of our
society and levels of government will be integrally involved in
how we conduct that review. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Diaz-Balart. I would like to ask
Chairman Oberstar if he has any questions at this time.
Mr. Oberstar. No questions, Madam Chair. I thought you put
your finger on the issue very well right at the outset of the
questioning. I also want to join with Mr. Diaz-Balart for
complimenting our colleague, Ms. Brown, for being such an
advocate on behalf of children and for the initiative Mr.
Shriver put forth. Mr. Cao as well has spoken to me many times
about the need to address these issues from his own experience
in New Orleans. But I think, Madam Chair, that, you know, we
have the FEMA authorization bill draft in Committee. We have
had--you have had numerous hearings on the subject, a great
deal of discussion about it, and I think we ought to just put
some language rather than all these things that the Commission
has recommended can be done, if you look at the forward,
disaster management recovery, mental health, child physical
health and trauma and so on all, of those can be done by
executive order.
Do you now how long it takes for executive orders to make
their way through? Do you know how long it takes to go through
the Federal Register process and the mounds of documentation
that they take and the months of publication of advanced notice
of proposed, notice of proposed rulemaking, proposed
rulemaking, final rulemaking. That could be years. I think we
ought to just put some directive language in our bill in
consultation with the minority members, the Republican Members
of the Committee and take these well-thought-out
recommendations in policy statement and direct FEMA to move on
them.
I don't think we can wait. I don't think the children can
wait. I don't think you, as you rightly pointed out, older
persons, persons older than children, persons with other
disabilities. You touched my heart so deeply with the story
about your daughter. The center that I talked about, the Range
Center, has numerous Down syndrome children who are being
wonderfully cared for. We don't get hurricanes in northern
Minnesota, but we do get blizzards and whiteouts.
And if one of those should strike and people should be
locked in there, as happens, we have a similar situation only
it will be a hell of a lot colder than during a hurricane. So
we have an opportunity here, and I think we ought to just move
ahead with this and do just do it by legislation.
Ms. Norton. The Chairman's impatience is well placed, it
seems to me, in light of the Committee's report and the
testimony we have heard today. This Subcommittee will work
quickly, Mr. Chairman, in light of what you have said. Mr. Cao,
have you any questions for the panel?
Mr. Cao. I do, Madam Chair. Thank you very much. First of
all, on behalf of my constituents in Orleans and Jefferson
parishes, I would like to extend my appreciation of your work
and the Ranking Member's work in holding this very important
hearing. And I would like to thank again your sustained
attention as demonstrated by this series of hearings related to
disaster response and recovery, especially what happened in my
district during Hurricane Katrina.
Madam Chair, you are absolutely right. One of the greatest
tragedies of Hurricane Katrina was the needless suffering of
children, the disabled and those with special needs. I have
heard of terrible stories from my constituents about their
experiences during Hurricane Katrina, and let me just tell you
a couple here. An elderly woman who was in my home area of New
Orleans was unable to evacuate. It wasn't until days later that
she was discovered dead in her home.
In another instance, emergency response officials rescued
an elderly man and transported him to a make-shift evacuation
center where he died while waiting for medical professionals to
treat his diabetes. Those are just a couple of stories that
basically explain some of the many problems that we had in
regards to preparation, and eventually also in the recovery
process. My question is to Mr. Manning. One of the biggest
problems that I have seen so far deals with the questions of
recovery, especially in the area of helping those who are
mentally ill, those who are disabled, and as some of the
information I have read today that right after Katrina, 1,100
schools were closed, and they were not open sufficiently quick
enough in order to address the needs of children.
What plans does FEMA have in place in regards to recovery
to quickly allow children to get back in schools, to allow
medical facilities to help treat the disabled, the mentally
ill, those who are in tremendous need?
Mr. Manning. Thank you, Mr. Cao. One of the things we have
learned through our past disasters is where we have shortfalls
in our plans, and getting schools reopened to get a sense of
normalcy in the community, get the students back where they can
learn, where they have their peer support groups is absolutely
critical. We were--while certainly nowhere near the magnitude
fortunately of what your constituents went through in
Louisiana--within a week in American Samoa, we were able to get
all but one or two of the schools reopened, and we were able to
get arrangements made for the students of those schools to
attend others in the short term. We have made the restoration
of essential services, including schools, one of the highest
priorities in our stabilization of an incident as we transition
from lifesaving to life-sustaining operations. We will continue
to examine closely how we do, how well we do, how well our
partnership with the local and State governments and the
nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations as we come together
as a team to respond to disasters where we can be better and
modify our plans, institute additional training and ensure that
the needs of our most vulnerable citizens are met as quickly as
possible.
Mr. Cao. Thank you. Mr. Shriver, in your testimony, you
stated the need for adequate child care facilities after a
disaster. Actually, I experienced that difficulty myself. I
remember driving all over the district, trying to find a place
where I could have people care for my two daughters. It was a
very difficult and very frustrating experience. Can you provide
or at least enlighten us with respect to how the lack of
adequate child care facilities impede the recovery process of
New Orleans?
Mr. Shriver. Well, I think the statistics that were in the
testimony speak to the dramatic impact and reduction of child
care slots and child care facilities in New Orleans. I know
that that is an ongoing issue, and I know it was an issue in
Mississippi as well. I think the real question is a
clarification of roles in what services are to be delivered for
a recovery and who is supposed to deliver those. So if it is
that child care facilities need to be rebuilt, is that FEMA's
responsibility, mental health services and case management
services I think are all very critical components to a recovery
not only in Louisiana but across the country. How many dollars
should be put into those different tranches and who is
responsible for implementing those?
So you see not only in the Gulf Coast, but you see last
year as well after Ike and Gustav that the issue of case
management. Who is responsible for case management, what does
case management mean? Is that FEMA's responsibility and is
finding a shelter, housing constitute successful closure of a
case? Or do you need mental health services, do you need health
care services, do you need child care services? I think that
that is something that you in your oversight responsibilities
as elected officials should really work hard with FEMA to
clarify. I think to defend FEMA, they have not had great
clarity on that in the past. I think Administrator Fugate has
done a good job, trying to get children's needs as part of the
overall plan as compared to an addendum to a plan but I think
that those issues of case management, is FEMA, do you want them
doing case management work?
Mr. Cao. Mr. Manning, can you provide a response to Mr.
Shriver?
Mr. Manning. Certainly. Thank you. We are actively working
with Health and Human Services to establish an interagency
agreement that is going to resolve the issue of case
management. By the end of the year, we expect that. Obviously
that is not fast enough because disasters could happen at any
moment. We need to be able to do that this afternoon. We have
worked with HHS to establish some prescriptive mission
assignments. We can do that today. We can deploy this quickly
today. Mr. Shriver is correct in that we have not always been
timely in that regard.
In our dealing with HHS, we may focus in on the emergency
medical piece to the exclusion of the other parts of the
Department and the other needs of the community. We have
recognized that. We have taken steps to account for that, and
we have the ability to send case management and will if
necessary send it in part of the immediate response package.
Mr. Cao. Now in regards to child care facilities, as Mr.
Shriver was pointing to, would it be the responsibility of FEMA
to make sure that those facilities could be open? How do you
come up with a plan, for example, to work out some of the
issues in dealing with, for example, if the facility was
insured under some private insurance plan? Have those details
been worked out?
Mr. Manning. The responsibility for the restoration for the
reopening of child care facilities is one that is shared by the
community. FEMA's role is one of supporting the Governors in
support of local communities in response to a disaster. We can
certainly and do provide planning guidance to communities to be
able to expedite that. Through the delivery of services,
disaster assistance can expedite that as well. Where a facility
won't have the means to re-establish themselves, we can assist
in that as well. We do consider child care centers when
operated by private nonprofits to be performing an essential
government service, and we will work with them, and then going
forward, look at rulemaking to clarify that as well.
Mr. Cao. Thank you, Madam Chair. Those are all the
questions I have.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Cao. Mr. Cao is really pointing
out the difference between--and I think Mr. Shriver's comments
go to this too--if they are already in a child care facility,
then we need to make sure the child care facility knows what to
do. But the need for child care facilities, if a family is
fortunate enough to go back to work and there is no standing
child care facility, whether it is the one she used before or
not, then of course case management has fallen very short. Ms.
Brown.
Ms. Brown. Thank you, Madam Chair. Let me just say that I
think Katrina will go down in one of the worst disasters in the
history of the United States. Not that it was one of the worst
disasters, it was one of the worst responses. And of course,
you saw a government that was incompetent. Thousands of people
got killed. This should not have happened, and what lessons
have we learned? But one of the things that was encouraging was
how the communities came together and worked together. My
community came together. Communities came together all over the
country, and we sent 10 tractor trailers full of--you know, we
called and said, What do you need? We need diapers, we need
water. Whatever they needed we put it on those tractor trailers
and we sent it to New Orleans and we had the State reps there
that unloaded them and made sure it got out to the people.
So there is a--you know the American people looked at it,
and this came from all over the country. They said, you know
what can we do? This could be us. So we have got to make sure.
I have made it my business to go there at least twice a year
and I am getting ready to go there again the first of November.
I tell them, I am their Member at large. I want to come and see
how we are working and what we are doing.
So Mr. Shriver, can you give me your report? I know it is
lengthy. But what recommendations, what should I be looking for
when I go the first of November?
Mr. Shriver. Specific to New Orleans or in general?
Ms. Brown. Well, you know in the broader picture. I come
from Florida so we have it constantly. But I can tell you, it
seems that maybe we are a little bit more prepared, maybe the
government worked better with us as partners because it seemed
that you know it wasn't a one team one fight there in that
whole region.
Mr. Shriver. I think that clearly the relationship that
FEMA has with its partners is much, much better today than it
ever has been. And I think we got a real sense not only the
National Commission, but my other job working for Save the
Children, which does respond to disasters have a much better
partnership with FEMA than we have ever had. The door is open.
The partnerships are much stronger than it ever has been and
there is real change in the last 4 months since Administrator
Fugate and Mr. Manning and their team came onboard, and it is
also true with the Red Cross. There are much better partnership
opportunities and much better responses than there ever were
clearly under Katrina or has been in the past.
I think you can continue to ask about the partnership
opportunities and put pressure on all of us to work better
together. I think you should ask in New Orleans about the case
management issues that are happening in the Gulf Coast. I think
you should ask about the case management response in Texas as a
result of last year's hurricanes. Are services being provided
to families and kids that need those services? Was that done in
a timely fashion? Mr. Manning talked about coming to grips with
a comprehensive case management system set up by the end of
this year. I think you should ask about that. I mean, I think
that--you know after Ike and Gustav went through last year--and
this was before the present administration was in there--there
were months and months of delay for case management services
being delivered. If that happened to my family, if that
happened to your family, I think there would be a lot of hell
to be paid.
The bottom line is that unfortunately for too many families
that are impacted by disasters, they are poor, in many cases
minority, and they don't have a mouthpiece to get their message
out. So I think you could look and ask those questions about
not only the case management after Katrina, which is ongoing,
and the mental health needs of the kids that are still in the
Gulf Coast is so profound, it is unbelievable. I will send you,
Congresswoman, some of the statistics that are out there, and
the lack of resources for mental health services for those
kids. I think those are all questions you should be asking the
Federal Government, if they are going to provide those
services.
Ms. Brown. I do know that as far as for the veterans, I
pushed from my other Committee on Veterans Affairs and we are
going to rebuild the VA hospital right there in the center. So
it is going to be kind of a medical center that will provide
the services because I know that they have had no hospital.
Their complete hospital was wiped out and the veterans facility
was wiped out. But it will be the center and working with a
group coordinating for the community. So there is progress, but
we need to make sure that we continue the progress.
Mr. Shriver. Well, I agree with you, Congresswoman. I think
as Mr. Diaz-Balart said in the beginning of his comments and
throughout his comments, that there is still a lot of work that
still needs to be done----
Ms. Brown. No question.
Mr. Shriver. --I think we should be asking the
administration one of the lead recommendations that I spoke
about and that is in the report is having folks that understand
children's needs be part of the Domestic Policy Council and the
National Security Council, and we have talked to those folks
and they will tell you the needs of kids do not come to the
forefront. I have talked to Members of Congress who have told
me that after Katrina, there was a lot of focus on housing and
on levees and rebuilding those and the infrastructure, which is
all critical but we forget about human service needs and we
forget about poor kids, and we forget about the mental health,
the health services of those kids and we move on to the next
disaster. It has almost been 5 years now and I think we need to
ask this administration to really step in and address some of
the glaring inadequacies in the planning for, responding to and
recovery of disasters generally but in particular the one that
is still going on in New Orleans, which is still a disaster.
Ms. Brown. As we sit here today and speak--I just returned
from Haiti--but there is a tent city right there in New Orleans
where families, children, are living under the bridge or
something. So there is a lot of work that we realize we still
have to do to support the families that are in those
communities.
Madam Chairwoman, I want to thank you again for holding
this hearing. I am looking forward to thoroughly reviewing the
report from the Commission. Thank you.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Ms. Brown, for your leadership.
Ms. Edwards.
Ms. Edwards. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. I just have a
couple of questions. When you think about the population, 25
percent children 18 and under, 20 percent of our population
identified with disabilities at a minimum, about 20 percent
elder population, when you start adding those numbers--although
there is some overlap--it is our population. So I really do
share the view, I think, expressed by each of you in different
ways that when it comes to disaster management, we do need to
look holistically because we are talking about the population,
not a special population, not a segregated population but
really all of the population that requires a certain set of
needs.
My question goes to a couple of things. One, I recall
during Katrina--because I did much more work around issues of
domestic violence--that many of our national domestic violence
organizations were able to reach out to the Administration for
Children and Families not through FEMA to provide relief and
relocation services for mostly a population of women and
children who had experienced domestic violence. One of the
things that was happening in New Orleans is that those women
and children who had to be evacuated from shelters were, in
fact, moved to a place exactly where their abuser was. And when
you get to issues around case management, there is a really
clear need for case management because if you had a case
manager who is looking holistically at the family and its
needs, that kind of placement actually would not have happened.
There was some additional work done through the Administration
for Children and Families. It really was not FEMA-related when
it came to relocation of some of that population.
So I would just draw your attention to it. I also am really
concerned on this issue of standards. I wonder if each of you
might speak to that. The kind of standards for preparedness
that might be necessary for child care providers but also long-
term care providers, adult day care facilities. All of these
sort of different kind--you know, day care arrangements for
adults with special intellectual and physical challenges. Many
of these kinds of institutions are already regulated by the
State. So how difficult would it be to encourage our States or
facilitate our States' ability to provide both tougher
standards, but also the training and tools needed to
participate effectively in disaster management efforts?
So I wonder if you would speak to that. Then in some
instances, I know in the State of Maryland, most child care is
actually not provided in these more regulated child care
facilities. It is home-based child care, even multiple children
in home-based child care. So I would be concerned if we were
only focused on ensuring the needs in that environment when we
are missing the needs of a much bigger population for children.
Mr. Manning and Mr. Shriver also.
Mr. Manning. Thank you, Congresswoman Edwards. Those are
very important points. If I may, I will start with the second
first. The same difficulties that we have in reaching
individuals and trying to increase individual and family
preparedness, community preparedness we would face, we do face
in reaching the child care center that is based in the home,
that is maybe a nanny share or simply the willingness of
neighbors to help neighbors and bring their children into the
home. There is not regulation, there is not grant guidance that
we, at FEMA, can issue that will address that. What we can do
is to continue to try to push on our individual and family
preparedness initiatives in our partnerships with the team at
State and local governments and private nonprofits throughout
the community, throughout the country to try to reach those. At
the same time, as we work with the established and regulated
child care facilities, again, as you mention, they are
regulated largely by State governments and in some cases
municipal codes. It is not something that barring Federal
legislation we can reach from FEMA.
We have often success in implementing those types of
programs through grant guidance but again, as there aren't
grant programs specifically designed for child care centers,
that is a population that is missed. We plan to, and are
currently incorporating the recommendations from the Commission
and our partners that are going to our State and local
partners, part of which will encourage the incorporation, as we
have discussed, of the entire society into our planning. And
this can be done as well. But we have seen through the
tragedies of school violence over the last number of years,
Columbine and Virginia Tech and others, that there has been a
response by the secondary and higher education, high school
facilities to do this planning, to do safety planning. They are
required to. There are grants for it and they do it. The
encouragement of child care facilities to do that same type of
planning is a natural extension of that same school safety
planning initiatives that we have had for our elementary,
secondary and higher education facilities. I believe that we
would have success encouraging that message as well.
Mr. Shriver. In the State of Maryland, Congresswoman, in
the last legislative session there was legislation introduced
by Senator Frosh that was passed that set these basic
requirements for the State of Maryland. They were supported by
the Department of Human Resources and the Department of
Education as low-cost or no-cost alternatives. These basic
requirements--this is for child care facilities--also reach
into home-based care as well because, as you know, they are
regulated by the State.
They have less, obviously, kids in the home, but you can
have those standards apply across the board. They have done it,
I believe, in Maryland for senior centers as well. So they are
low-cost or no-cost alternatives. You can tie Federal dollars,
as I mentioned in my opening statements, to the child care
development block grant and the entity that is getting CCDBG
money to maintaining, or reaching Federal standards.
Also, I would say this is not necessarily FEMA's
responsibility. The Administration for Children and Families
and their child care bureau, you ought to have conversations
with them. FEMA is part of the team, but again, it gets back to
the clarification of roles. I don't think they need to be
driving that issue. But should ACF be requiring that? Should
they be setting the standards? Should they be finding what
those standards are and sending those across the country? The
answer, I think, is yes. There was push-back because I have
testified on behalf of the bill in Maryland, and there was some
concern about cost. The bottom line on the fiscal note said
there was no cost. Other States are doing this now, including
Mississippi and Alabama, and they deal with both home-based and
larger centers. That is why I specifically said child care
facilities because it includes both the home-based as well as
the centers that serve more kids.
So I think you ought to bring in the Administration for
Children and Families and ask them what they are going to do on
this issue as well and whether they have standards that should
be implemented across the country and push them to do that.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Ms. Edwards. This is a question
certainly for Mr. Shriver, who mentioned in his testimony but
clearly as well for Mr. Manning, and Mr. Riggen and Mr. Vaughn,
as well may have had some relevant experience here, to say the
least. The nemesis, perhaps, of this Committee has been case
management. Indeed, one of my questions to you, Mr. Manning, is
how many people are still listed as in case management from
Katrina on the gulf coast? This has been a very troublesome
area for this Committee, which has had a number of hearings on
the matter.
Mr. Manning. Madam Chairwoman, I apologize. I don't have
that information today, but I will provide it to you.
Ms. Norton. 30 days, Mr. Manning, if you could get us that
information.
Mr. Manning. Sure.
Ms. Norton. You mentioned, Mr. Shriver, the notion of case
management, the need for what you call holistic case
management. We know from the hearings we have had that these
families, already dislocated and displaced, have been compelled
to go here and there for services, housing here, health care
there, no transportation to get there or very scattered
transportation. Yet, that is logistically very difficult, as we
have seen, by the failure of both the States and FEMA in this
regard. I wonder if you would indicate what you mean by
holistic case management? What would it consist of? Who would
be involved? Would it only be the government? Would it be
nonprofits? How would you put together a case management
system? Then Mr. Manning, how do you evaluate these contractors
who are parts of your case management system who often are for
profit contractors, Mr. Shriver?
Mr. Shriver. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. As you know,
FEMA has entered into relationships with, I believe, four
different approaches to case management. Within the interim
report, which I am happy to send to you, we spell out what
holistic comprehensive case management is. It includes health,
mental health, nutrition, education, human service needs of
kids and families. It does involve voluntary agencies that
would provide case management services. You see different
examples of it as a result of the hurricanes that have gone
through the gulf coast over the last 4.5 years. I don't want to
go through the----
Ms. Norton. Do you mean that these would be working
together in a group--I mean, these services all exist in some
form or fashion if people would only get to them.
Mr. Shriver. That is correct. I think, again, what I would
say is I think you in your oversight capacity ought to be
asking FEMA and the Federal family or the Federal Government
agencies that are working on case management what approach they
are going to take that is comprehensive in nature and when are
they going to make that decision by because I think it is
just----
Ms. Norton. Let me go to Mr. Manning on that. You correctly
point out the government agency with responsibility here. Now,
Mr. Manning, for the life of me we could never understand why
FEMA didn't say, okay, X, Y, Z and A, B and C, you are hereby
constituting the case management group for the parish of X.
Guess what, you are all in the same group, you are all under
the same tent. You decide how and where to go. You go together.
What keeps that from happening, Mr. Manning? What are you doing
to allow that to happen so that we don't have scattered
services? Are you working with nonprofits in the same group as
for-profits and in the same group as the agencies of the State
and FEMA itself? How does that work? We are trying to picture
in our mind after having been frustrated over and over again by
the same complaints about here and there and how nonprofits
couldn't even get into the mix. I need to know what your vision
is of case management as directed by FEMA.
Mr. Manning. Thank you, Madam Chair. As I mentioned
earlier, we are entering into an interagency agreement with HHS
with the ACF for exactly that. We are dissatisfied as well. We
in the past have had an inconsistent approach. Clearly we share
your frustration. The long-term solution and the reason it has
planned to take until the end of the year is that we can do
exactly as you are describing, incorporating fine methodology
to incorporate all of the various private nonprofits, or NGOs
and PNPs that involve----
Ms. Norton. It is not rocket science, Mr. Manning. Just
tell them, You are the designated group for the county that had
just been under--we just don't see why it is so difficult. And
we are very concerned within 30 days to get at least some
outline of how this would operate. We can't tell when the next
hurricane is coming. We think it is too late for us to have to
ask that question. We are very fearful that we will be held
just as responsible as the new administration. Just because we
have been asking it forever doesn't mean we will continue to
tolerate what seems to us to be--maybe I am making this overly
simplistic. Let me ask Mr. Riggen. The Red Cross has been in
this business longer than government. Mr. Riggen, what is the
problem? What do you do when, after all, you go in fresh and
new to a Committee. Yeah, you have Red Cross chapters there.
Are you able to get at least the services you provide in the
context you have in the community together under one umbrella
to work together? You, of course, work with FEMA which may
have, if anything, destabilized you or in the past may have
done so. Could you tell us about your experience, bringing
together the several services that you render as a part of Red
Cross?
Mr. Riggen. Thank you, Madam Chairwoman. This is a great
question. And to build on Congresswoman Edwards' point on
standards, we have really started to focus now on the recovery
or the casework and case management standards. In the years
after Katrina, there was a large focus on mass care, on the
immediate evacuation needs, and on the sheltering needs. We are
now getting to some of the real crux of casework and that
ability of organizations to start to meet with families and not
only identify the families themselves but to identify their
needs and to share that information across agencies. One of the
biggest tragedies is for families is to have to tell their
stories 12 or 13 times, depending on who they are going to see.
The Red Cross worked with other agencies after 9/11 to
build a system called the Coordinated Assistance Network, which
allows casework to flow between agencies so that if a client
comes to the Red Cross, tells their story, expresses their
needs, that case is able to be seen by other agencies and
shared across the network so the family could then go to see
that agency and receive services as well, and our caseworker
can actively push the clients to those resources as they become
available.
The other thing that we have done at the Red Cross is we
have changed our strategy about casework and we have become
much more holistic on our initial push. Casework must happen in
the initial week, not months. There has to be that ability to
go door to door to talk to families in need, elderly who are
homebound, people with disabilities who can't get out of their
homes or don't have the transportation. We want to come to your
front door, have that conversation to see what the needs are
before the family starts to degrade, before the individual
decompensates and needs additional assistance. How do we get
those resources to show up on day 4, on day 5 and then
transition that data and recovery information to the case
management, whether they be Federal, local or State? We want to
be able to provide that resource and be a holistic team to do
that. So as part of that casework, what we have reinvented is
not only the caseworker, but also the health worker, the mental
health worker and bringing in the community alongside with all
their additional resources that we can provide to a client in
the weeks, not months, after a disaster.
Ms. Norton. And I don't see the logistical problem. We live
in the age of video conferences. I have had video conferences
with residents from the District of Columbia in Federal prison,
for God's sake. So I really don't see the issue here, which
accounts for the concern. Mr. Manning, I hope you understand
what is our concern. As we understand it, if you are a
recognized--if you have been dubbed and maybe there is a way to
do this ahead of time or during the time, if there were an
unexpected catastrophe, but you have the status of a government
entity for purposes of reimbursement on some occasions. You,
the Red Cross, our oldest such service organization. But as I
understand it, Mr. Manning, other nonprofits or private
entities which are well recognized and which some say provide
better service in emergencies and nonemergencies than the
government can are not recognized and, therefore, cannot be
reimbursed.
Do you have a process that will be used or is being used to
select in advance or during emergencies nonprofits who could
reach out to be helpful? For example, the American Red Cross
has itself an agreement with Save the Children and Church of
the Brethren. I don't know if they get reimbursed.
Let me ask you both: First, Mr. Manning. I am talking about
reimbursement for folks trusted in the community. Even more so
than having the HHS or some Federal Government entity which
they may have never heard of come in. Under whatever rulemaking
you are engaged in, will there be a way to formally designate
more such entities who could be useful to the government and to
the community in case of a disaster?
Mr. Manning. Madam Chair, as to the specifics of the
rulemaking, we can get a report to you within 30 days.
Ms. Norton. Within 30 days, sir. This is very important to
learn. We don't have any druthers here. We have had
heartbreaking testimony from religious organizations, for
example, from Louisiana willing to offer services, some of whom
have indeed offered services when FEMA and the State was not
even present, for whom not a dime of reimbursement. They are
good Christians or good--and most of the time, they were
Episcopalians or Catholics who simply couldn't help it. They
simply came forward. We don't want to at all relax government
standards, and we want to make sure that you are not aiding
people of your religious group only, church/state means
everything to at least this Member and that separation must be
obtained in the provision of services, as Catholic services,
for example always recognizes. But we are concerned with those
who can be most helpful, not those who had a government title
necessarily who may be strangers in the community, be the
entities that you can look to. What about this trilateral
agreement, Mr. Riggen, with Save the Children and the Church of
Brethren? That is an agreement with you, I take it.
Mr. Riggen. It is a fantastic agreement, mostly around
shelters. It is an opportunity for Save the Children to provide
some resources. Some kids that provide a safe place for
children in a shelter and those resources come into an
environment and Church of the Brethren provides a workforce for
us to be able to provide child care for families in shelters or
other service delivery sites as they go seek assistance, as
they spend time with a caseworker or case management to know
what the next steps are. And that is a program that we do.
Ms. Norton. That operates as a part of the Red Cross
services?
Mr. Riggen. It does, absolutely.
Ms. Norton. So they would be designated to be reimbursed?
Mr. Riggen. Most of our services are not. We do not seek
reimbursement from the Federal Government. They are done--and
just to speak to the earlier point around the compassion and
the generosity of the American public, the public has come
forward in every disaster with immense generosity, and they
continue to do so. Those funds come from private donations
large and small, and we work with our partners to help them
with cost, much like we do now in sheltering.
If a local church wants to open their doors at shelters, we
can seek to provide them the training and skill sets to do
that, and we also help to recover their costs.
Ms. Norton. That is very important. I want to indicate, we
are not trying to pay churches for what their religion tells
them they should be doing anyway. My major concern is that FEMA
has often contracted--here I am talking about people for whom
you contract--has often contracted with for-profits before they
would contract with non-profits who have reputations for
service delivery. We couldn't understand why a for-profit would
be better equipped than a non-profit who may have served in the
community for some time and perhaps be receiving grants from
the State, why that wouldn't be someone that would be
considered for this service.
Mr. Vaughn, you talked about the role of preparedness. You
talked about warnings, education, transportation and sheltering
services. You know when people hear us talk about that, Mr.
Manning, at a hearing where FEMA appears, they may assume that
this is what FEMA is supposed to do. Could we make clear what
the role Federal here is, what the State role is? And I want to
first go to Mr. Vaughn because he raises the question of the
design of the warning and the education and the transportation,
the sheltering services which would of course be particularly
vital to for elderly and disabled people. What have you found
with respect to those services, Mr. Vaughn, which move people
around, which warn people who are disabled or elderly? And Mr.
Manning, is it clear whose responsibility this is? Mr. Vaughn?
Mr. Vaughn. You know, what we have learned from our
research again is that most communities, maybe 30 percent, are
doing the planning they need. And I think a lot of this
discussion that has been going on here with you all about case
management, we, again, hear about that. People trying to get in
touch with Social Security or whatever. I think the bigger
concern is what happens if we have another disaster? A couple
of us in this room have roots in Florida and you just know that
someday that is going to happen. So I think we are not prepared
locally, and I think people at the local level are looking to
the Federal Government or to their State governments, yet they
know they need to be doing it in the local community because
when the problems hit, that is where the people expect the
services to be.
So that is why we see FEMA in this role where people look
to them or look to the Federal Government. I guess when you are
looking to the Federal Government, you are looking to FEMA in
this whole concept that we were talking about of a coherent
policy where all the different levels are talking and
communicating with one another. Again, we think that we have
got to get money down into the local communities through grants
or whatever so that the planning can happen. Because if not 5
years from now, we will be talking about who knows what
disaster and saying, didn't we learn from the lessons.
Ms. Norton. Well, Mr. Manning, I just want to alert you
that one of the worst confusions to emerge from Katrina was who
was responsible for doing what. Now it strikes me--and Mr.
Shriver talks about working with the city council. It strikes
me that a lot of this provisional transportation, Mr. Vaughn
raises sheltering services. You know, FEMA is not supposed to
fly in like Superman and set this up. I recognize you are new,
but it does seem to us when we are talking about elderly people
and children that FEMA stressed that what we are talking about,
is not the case, mostly State responsibilities.
Again, here goes the Chairman, a lot of this is written in
regulations and the rest. But if it was so clear, how come it
took us time to find out who should have gotten people on
trains and buses out of New Orleans? It turned out to be a
State responsibility. Because there was confusion, FEMA wasn't
sure what to do, whether they were overriding the Governor or
the mayor. It was pitiful, frankly. My own notion was, you know
what, if they don't do it, jump in there. Guess what, that is
what happened. Finally they sent the Coast Guard in and said,
all hands on deck, but that was after considerable confusion.
Now Mr. Vaughn, you raised the notion of a regional disability
coordinator. Now there is, I take it, Mr. Manning, one
disability coordinator? Boy, is that all we have got for the
entire country, no regional coordinators? What do you think
about that, Mr. Manning? Do we need somebody whose job--I am
not suggesting the proliferation of new jobs in the Federal
Government. But is there somebody who could take on that
responsibility in the region? Or do you think the disability
coordinator recently set up pursuant to statute is sufficient
for the moment?
Mr. Manning. Madam Chair, first, we are examining how the
regions are structured and what responsibilities devolve from
Washington, from FEMA headquarters to the regions where the
responsibilities lie and where the functions are best served.
That examination is happening currently. But I should emphasize
that as we have discussed today, the solution to this isn't
necessarily additional functions or additional personnel or
additional plans or additional initiatives set aside to address
the gaps. The solution, we believe, is eliminating gaps. It is
taking care of all the Members of our community, all the
Members of our society from the beginning, and how we conceive
of our policy in the first place, how we write our plans in the
first place, how we do our operational development in the first
place. We see that as the solution. So while yes, ma'am, we are
looking at how we are structured in the regions and how we
would best serve the disability community throughout the
country, we are at the same time trying to eliminate the need
for special consideration in our planning and in our policies.
Ms. Norton. Well, thank you very much. Mr. Cao, do you have
any further questions?
Mr. Cao. No, I don't, Madam Chair.
Ms. Norton. Thank you, Mr. Cao. Mr. Shriver, you have
focused on children. We have all discussed the context in which
children and people with disabilities are found. Is the
implication of your report that there needs to be, quite apart
from the disability coordinator, a separate focus on children
or children and families?
Mr. Shriver. I think the answer to that, Madam Chair, is
what Mr. Manning just alluded to, which is that instead of
having an extra senior level person or two people in FEMA be
designated as the kids person or the disabilities person or
potentially both, that what needs to happen is it needs to
permeate the organization. The plans that go forth, the
frameworks that are proposed across it, but what we don't want
is for kids to be an addendum because I have talked to
countless emergency managers across the country, and they have
these reports.
By the time they get through the reports or the plans, they
are exhausted. They don't want to go to the addenda, and that
is where kids and people with disabilities are often put, in
the addendum. I think what Administrator Fugate has done and
what Mr. Manning is talking about, which is the correct
approach, is to get the special needs populations, including
kids, to be written in throughout the plans and to be part of
the entire agency so that you don't have a one-off for kids or
one-off for people with disabilities. So I think that that
approach is the right approach. I think the administrator
deserves credit for that, and I do think, Madam Chair, just to
your question on case management--I know this isn't exactly
what you just asked--but I think it was strongly recommended
that case management reside within HHS, and Congress, in its
wisdom, gave the appropriations to FEMA to spearhead it. I
would suggest that FEMA should not be in the business of
delivering or being held responsible for case management. They
are part of a team but that it really ought to go to the folks
that have the experience, like the Administration for Children
and Families that contracts with Catholic Charities. It is
delivered by a nonprofit, but that that responsibility ought to
be primarily with HHS instead of with FEMA, who has other
mandates out there.
I think Congress, frankly, made a mistake in shifting that
responsibility. I don't know whether FEMA agrees with that at
this point but I think that they are part of that role, and
they don't have the expertise to be case managers. We ought to
be giving it to an entity in the Federal Government that has
the expertise, that focuses in on this, and have FEMA be part
of that team rather than be the entity that makes those
decisions. The horse may be out of the barn on that one.
Ms. Norton. There is something to what you are saying, Mr.
Shriver. Out of FEMA, there are now certain housing functions
that were so embedded in HUD that essentially HUD is
responsible for them, but I can tell you that this Congress, if
anything, out of FEMA consolidated all of it in the Department
of Homeland Security, and it runs somewhat counter to your
notion of trying to deal with these problems in case management
to say that there is another whole Federal bureaucracy that
needs to come over into FEMA. The question of priority when you
are really a part of something else, not ongoing emergency
management as opposed to saying you are part of a case
management team because otherwise, we are going to be told that
people with disabilities, we should hand that over to somebody
I guess in HHS and people who deal with nursing homes, given
what happened to the people who were left there, we should give
that over to them.
We are going to, I think, go with a regional recommendation
which is, we still do not see why a Federal Government laced
together where people have relations across agency lines need
only go across the street to find one another, why you can't--
and the agencies cannot, by statute, be instructed that in case
of emergency, HHS, HUD, whoever else shall provide services
and/or personnel who shall be part of case management which
must be rendered someplace. If it is going to be rendered under
somebody, it ought to be somebody who is expert in emergency
management as somebody in the day care department of HHS may
not be or somebody who does nursing homes may not be in terms
of alacrity and rapidity of response.
Ms. Norton. FEMA has got to convince me that it must be
dismembered in order for us to get people under the same
umbrella, working on the same group of people. I still cannot
understand why a simple decision in FEMA, why that was not
done. I believe if FEMA had called the Secretaries of the
various agencies, it would have been done.
I detest government bureaucracy and love government and
believe some of my colleagues want to take--we give them
ammunition for wanting to take apart government precisely
because we are not able to do commonsense things like get in
the same room. So I can understand what Mr. Shriver means, and
I know where the expertise lies, but I also know where the
priority to deal with an emergency lies. And I know the next
thing we would be criticized for doing is not rapidly
responding from one source to one--to one emergency.
So, you know, it could be six of one and half a dozen of
another, but I believe that Congress has made that decision.
We are going to leave this, Mr. Manning--I can tell you and
you can see, people even want to take some of your service
away. We are going to leave it to see if this administration
can do better to serve under one umbrella all that people need.
And you are there for 4 months. Count on us to have
hearings within 4 months to see just how far you have gotten in
carrying out or outlining what you are going to do.
And I do want to announce--Mr. Riggen, did you have
something to respond to that? You seemed to be asking for
attention
Mr. Riggen. No, ma'am. I am just in solid agreement with
the role. I want to express that the voluntary agencies have
moved forward on the case management in unison; and in part of
the voluntary agencies active in disaster, the national
organization has come together to create standards around case
management and casework, and that allows us to share the data
and to work collaboratively.
So we are excited to see some progress towards the Federal
case management, and hope that we ensure that they are both
connected, that there is not a disparity between the voluntary
agencies working and the government working, but they are
connected and well integrated.
Ms. Norton. If necessary, you know every Federal agency is
located in regions, the same region where FEMA is. All you have
got to do--you wouldn't even have to detail. If it got bad
enough, as in Katrina, you could detail somebody from another
agency. I mean, these are such obvious things that is a
presumption in their favor that the agency would have to
overcome if it decided to do something else.
Mr. Cao.
Mr. Cao. Thank you so much, Madam Chair. And, Madam Chair,
you just alluded to one of the problems that the President
addressed during his visit to New Orleans this past week is the
need for the different Federal agencies to be better
coordinated. I note that he has tasked Secretary Napolitano on
that task.
Mr. Manning, could you provide us with a status or at least
provide us with a written status in the next 2 weeks with
respect to how this plan to better organize and to better
coordinate these different Federal agencies is coming along?
And my other question to you is, besides working with the
different Federal agencies, do you have a plan in place in
order to better coordinate organizations like that of Mr.
Riggen, the Red Cross, as Madam Chair has pointed out to other
nonprofit organizations, church organizations, to help in
preparations and in recovery?
Mr. Manning. Thank you, Congressman Cao. I will answer your
second question first, in that I do believe we do have a plan
in place, and whether it is adequately understood and followed
is probably the question; that we need to do a better job about
involving our communities and our partners as we develop our
procedures, as we implement our plans, as we respond to
disasters.
That is something we work on every day. We analyze our
response to every exercise and every disaster and try to find
where we didn't do well enough and do better the next time. And
as we revise the national response framework next year, towards
the end of this year and into next, we will certainly and
absolutely involve everybody across the response spectrum,
across the entire team of emergency management.
You have heard a number of times today, FEMA is not the
team, it is part of the team. Our responsibility is one to
bring people to the table, provide the tools and resources in
order for them to perform their job where necessary, and where
absolutely necessary, stand by and support of others.
So the initiatives working better together with the
interagency, with all of our Federal partners, that is one that
has improved greatly in recent years and certainly in recent
months through the Disaster Readiness Group, the DRG, the body
that works together for disaster preparedness.
And following up on your question--I am sorry, not your
question--the question earlier about the integrated planning
system, as we are revising that system, we are building a new
planning system in consultation with the interagency. As
opposed to FEMA or the Department of Homeland Security creating
and developing and handing over a planning system for the
entire Federal Government and our interagency partners to work
together on, we are going to build that in collaboration in the
beginning. So it will take into account the resource shortfalls
of other agencies, and we can have true collaboration between
Federal departments in response to disasters like you have seen
in your community.
Mr. Cao. Thank you, Madam Chair.
Ms. Norton. One final question. I am taking a page out of
Mr. Shriver's testimony as a kind of model that--and I need to
know more about it, that he says is already in existence now.
Now, this has to do only with children, but as a model for
getting together the disparate agencies, Mr. Shriver says on
page 4 that the Administrator, Mr. Fugate, has announced,
quote, "the creation of a children's working group." There is a
nice word, "working group." If after every disaster you just
had a working group of case management, you might have what we
are thinking about.
Now, maybe we are being too simple, so correct me if I am
wrong.
But anyway, let us look at what we have done with this
children's working group. It says, "which will serve as a
centralized platform across all FEMA directorates to ensure
that the unique needs of children are incorporated into all
disaster plans. The working group is tasked not only with
identifying and facilitating how best to integrate children
into all FEMA planning efforts, but also with improving FEMA's
capacity to work collaboratively with its partners and other
key nongovernmental stakeholders." So it looks like there would
be this working group that already understood what to do with
children.
The question is, can we have a working group in the
disaster area which would simply pull in the same way that you
appear to be doing with respect to thinking through children?
Where is that? Does it have a chairman? Is it an internal
group? How does it operate?
Could we get a working group for each disaster in Florida
where there is a next hurricane? In Louisiana or Mississippi,
would that help if each agency was designated--each agency was
tasked to designate a person in the region, and they already
are sitting right there to work with the working--the FEMA
working group?
Mr. Manning. Thank you, Madam Chair. I think the easy
answer to the second half of your question is that I believe we
have that in place through----
Ms. Norton. Since when?
Mr. Manning. The planning bodies we have had in place for a
number of years that have not had the attention, not had the
focus necessary, but have been----
Ms. Norton. So you are telling me that there is a working
group for case management in Louisiana, in each parish already?
Mr. Manning. No, ma'am.
What--what I am suggesting is that there was a body--there
is a body that has been in place that we have given that
mission. The regional interagency steering committees, the risk
groups in each one of the FEMA regions, that have designees,
that have representatives from all of the Federal interagency
bodies within the region, as has been mentioned earlier.
And we have been using them in Region 9, based in
California, to do catastrophic disaster planning, to work
closely with the community, because they live in the community
and they are part of the community with another body. We
pronounce all of our acronyms; the ESFs, the Emergency Support
Function coordination groups, those are the elite agencies, and
all of the Federal agencies that are assigned to a particular
function. So in the case of ESF 6 and the mass care, there are
bodies both within the Federal interagency led by FEMA here in
Washington working in coordination with counterparts in--in the
case of California FEMA Region 9, the Federal Region 9, to do
exactly as you described, to build----
Ms. Norton. So in Region 9, where all the agencies are
located just like they are in every region, there is already a
case--if there were to be, in that case probably an earthquake,
case managers would immediately be under the same umbrella and
be working together based on this model?
Mr. Manning. The planning is around the response, the
holistic response to the earthquake. The functions of case
management under ESF 6 are assigned to Health and Human
Services. That is the way that disasters are managed. FEMA
assigns mission tasks, mission orders, to Federal agencies to
coordinate the response to a particular function.
In the case of----
Ms. Norton. I am sorry. Is this preparedness or response or
both?
Mr. Manning. This is in response. We plan in preparedness
and then use the plans in the response phase, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. So there would be case managers who would be
pulled out in the event of an earthquake in California, are you
saying? Or not?
I am really only interested in the people level. What we
have heard from FEMA for 5 or 6 years now is that there are
elements of their bureaucracy that are already pulled together
to do X, Y. Then real people come in and say, We have never saw
them before.
So I am asking about case management in particular. Mr.
Shriver said that that was in disarray for children, and it
turns out it was also in disarray for elderly people and
anybody else who needed to be brought together.
What I am asking is whether Region 9 is going to give us
the makings of a case management umbrella for people on the
ground in case of an earthquake, and whether that could be
replicated in other regions across the country.
Mr. Manning. Madam Chair, I believe that that will be the
case.
We have written--we are writing prescriptive assignments.
We are identifying a particular task with a particular team to
go and perform, in the case of case management, that function.
That--that initiative is happening here in Washington, not
specific--that particular initiative, not specific to Region 9,
but it is happening. So that wherever a disaster may occur, the
Health and Human Services will--the Administration for family--
for Children and Families will lead that mission and to the
people, to the team, will deploy in the immediate hours of a
disaster, yes, ma'am.
Ms. Norton. Mr. Manning, I am encouraged by what you say. I
urge you to use Region 9 where you appear to already have begun
work as a kind of pilot.
I was a Federal Government official heading an agency at
one time, and I found the agency in total and complete
disarray. In putting it together, I did not say, Okay, I know
what to do. And I thought I knew what to do; I had done
something similar at the State level.
I said, Let's do this. I said, We will do pilot projects.
We are not omniscient; we will see if this works in a
particular location.
Since we are talking preparedness and not a disaster--of
course, that would be--for example, if case managers were
already understood to be who they were, where they would come
from, if the agency had already designated people as case
managers during the time, from the various agencies that would
be involved, that is what I am talking about.
As a result of--we chose, in this case, three sections of
the country, and the successes there and some of the
deficiencies taught us what to do. We were able to essentially
reform the agency from the ground up based on experimentation
within the agency, learning from our mistakes.
And what I am afraid of is that we will be in a situation
like FEMA was last year. There were ice storms, there were
floods; so they had to kind of figure it out, all in a number
of different emergencies at the same time.
FEMA did a better job. But we do really still get a seat-
of-your-pants rather than a nimble emergency response from
FEMA. And part of it is that preparedness is a whole lot more
than, you know, making sure that there is water on the ground,
is making sure that there are people on the ground prepared to
serve people, as Mr. Riggen says.
One thing to look at is how would you get people door to
door in an earthquake? Could you do it? As Mr. Riggen said, if
you don't do it in the first week, forget about it; they are
going to try to make their way to a shelter.
So we would like to see some kind of case in point in
operation because of our exasperation from the community, from
complaints from the community throughout the years on case
management following Katrina.
We use these hearings as assignments and as problem-solving
missions. We do not gather information at hearings. We can read
the report. We use it to cross-examine the government
officials, to hear further from those in the private and
nongovernment sector, and then to try to figure out how to
actually get something done. And we measure ourselves and the
agency by which--by the notion of whether out of the hearing
has come concrete action that, at the end of the year, we can
point to. And that is why FEMA received so much criticism
before, because we saw it, Mr. Manning. We hadn't accomplished
very much, and we hadn't gotten FEMA to accomplish more.
We were very quick to commend FEMA for very significant
improvement that was made and, frankly, not slow to criticize
FEMA when people kept coming--from Mississippi and Louisiana,
in particular--to complain particularly about case management.
We had one of the worst hearings in my career in the
Congress regarding people who were left in trailers for the
longest time and regarding the most vulnerable people under
Katrina. These were the people who lived alone, who were
disabled, who were able to care for themselves when they were
elderly; and FEMA told them their time was up. And they never
had any place to go before and they didn't have any place to go
then.
And then FEMA said, But we are providing you with a place
and FEMA was providing them with a place. And we had HUD
before. HUD said, That's right, FEMA's right; we have got the
place.
And what was not in place was the case management, somebody
who would take that person--not as a statistic, as somebody who
is blind and lives alone and now is being told to go to some
far-off county to live alone, but as somebody with a case
manager who would have been willing to go to that adjoining
county to live if set up with the proper case management.
That is complicated work, but we are convinced it can be
done; and it is a standard that we know your administration is
committed to.
May we thank each and every one of you for very useful
testimony and we will hold all concerned, those from the
private sector, accountable. And we know we have an
administration that does want to improve in this regard.
This hearing is adjourned.
[Whereupon, at 4:31 p.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
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